Page 4 of Midnight Whispers (Forbidden Entanglements #1)
Chapter Four
R iley folded each item of clothing carefully and packed it into a box. He intended to donate his mother’s clothing to the local homeless shelter. She would have wanted someone in need to get some use out of her stuff. Riley hoped a recovering addict would receive it all. Knowing someone who was on their way to recovery, doing the thing his mother hadn’t been able to do, made Riley content even amid packing up his mother’s life.
He wished he had someone to help him, but he didn’t have family in the city. Vivianne’s family had died long before Riley was born. Riley had work acquaintances, but he didn’t know anyone well enough to ask them for anything, especially not to help him grieve.
He’d been too busy for too long to have friends beyond his brother, who lived a day’s drive away in Fortune Falls. Phone calls and video chats had made them closer, but the truth was he hadn’t actually seen Griffin in a long time. He didn’t remember the last time.
Riley didn’t have to be alone, though. With that thought firmly planted in his mind, he dialed his brother’s number.
“Hey, little bro. How are you doing today?” Griffin must have been at work because Riley could hear metal clinking against concrete.
“I haven’t gone back to work yet.” He couldn’t seem to get back into his old routine. It didn’t feel right. He just knew the second he walked into the store and put on that smock he would feel empty inside. After a while of doing the same old thing, the emptiness would swallow him whole. He’d get stuck in a life he hated surrounded by his mother’s shot glasses.
“Do you even have a job anymore? It’s been what…three weeks?” Closer to four, but who was counting besides his boss, who had stopped calling two weeks ago.
“My landlord is going to kick me out if I don’t pay the rent.” He hadn’t paid his light bill, either. He figured he had a couple more weeks before they shut off his electricity.
“Hold on.” The line went silent. Griffin was probably dialing their dad. It wasn’t the first time they had one of those three-way conference calls.
Griffin’s end of the conversation came back to life again.
“What’s going on, Griff?” Dad had as deep a voice as Griffin. The sound of it was just a little harsher. He always sounded as if he couldn’t shut off the part of himself that made him a good sheriff.
“Riley’s on the line with us.”
“Hey, son. How are you doing?” Was it Riley or did his dad’s voice soften? There was definitely concern in the tone.
“I’m fine. Packing up some of Mom’s clothes. The shelter comes to pick up donations for free.”
“He needs help paying the bills.” One thing about having an older brother-even one he wasn’t geographically close to-was he still acted like a brother and told all of Riley’s business to the one person Riley didn’t want to know.
Riley was just about ready to hang up when his dad said, “I’m here for you, Riley.”
“I am too, little bro.”
Something about the words, spoken with such heartfelt honesty and openness made the floodgates open, and Riley spilled his guts. “I don’t want to be here anymore. Not without mom. I-I don’t want to be alone.”
“Griffin, can you take a few days off?”
“Yep.”
“I can, too.”
“No. I…No, don’t do that.” He didn’t want them to be in the house. He didn’t want his emptiness to suck them in with him. “I’ll finish packing up the house. At least the stuff I want to donate, and I’ll throw out everything else.”
“And then what, Riley? We’re your family. We can help you.”
“I know.” He wanted to be a family with them. Nothing was holding them back now. “I’ll call the shelter and see if they can help pack stuff up. And then I’ll load my car and come to Fortune Falls.”
As soon as he said the words, it was as if his soul felt right about it, too.
“I’ll hire a local moving service for you, Riley.” His dad offered.
“But I don’t have a lot of stuff. Just clothes and maybe some smaller things, like pictures I want to keep. And some of mom’s important stuff.” Like the locket her mother gave her. And the picture album from her childhood.
“I used to know a guy. He owns a moving company. I’ll call him. He owes me for ditching me at prom. The fucking coward.” Griffin had made up his mind. Riley would get help no matter how much he protested, whether from Riley or Dad. The apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.
“Okay.” Riley switched gears. He grabbed a box and put his mother’s jewelry box along with the photo albums from her closet inside before going into his own room and putting clothing on top of it. “And dad?”
“Yeah, son.”
“I’ll take you up on the offer for college.”
“We’ll work out getting you signed up when you come home. Don’t forget to pack your laptop.”
“I don’t have one of those.”
“What?”
“I don’t have a computer, Dad.”
“No worries. I’ll get you one.”
“You also might want to clean out his bedroom, Dad,” Griffin added.
“I already started. I was hopeful after our last conversation.” Dad said that last part to Riley. It warmed his heart.
“Thank you.”
“I’ve always wanted you here, Riley.”
“Mom was—”
“I know. She was sick. But that doesn’t change the fact that I’ve always had room for you. I’ve dreamed of the day when you’d come home.”
Home. Dad had called it Riley’s home twice in the same conversation.
Riley wasn’t sure if Fortune Falls felt like home. All he knew was the house he’d shared with his mother no longer did. Maybe it never had. Maybe it had always felt like Vivianne’s deathbed.
“I can’t wait to see you guys.”
“We can’t wait either.” Dad and Griffin said at the same time.
“Give me a couple of days.” He had to tie up loose ends. Paying his landlord for last month’s rent was in order. He had enough in his bank account to pay off his bills and gas money, but not much else. He didn’t need much to get to Fortune Falls.